I started the day by walking to the Bethesda Metro station, where I took a train towards the Mall. The platform was crowded, and the train, when it arrived, was almost full, and was completely full by the time it pulled out of the station. Bethesda is the last stop before the train enters the District of Columbia. Only one person got on for all the stops in the District – the stations were empty. I suppose they had other ways of getting downtown. Overall it looked like a massive pilgrimage of the Beltway into the center: mostly white, a lot of parents with children. I guess they gave their kids the day off from school.
I got off at Farragut North, and once on the street I could feel the buzz. The streets were filled with
people; the cars had to work their way slowly through the crowds. Almost everyone was going in the same direction, so I just followed, going along I Street, around the White House area (very closed off; they used buses to block the streets), and down 18th Street to the Mall. The crowd was exactly like you’ve seen from every Obama rally: every type of American was there. The main constituencies of the Obama coalition predominated (blacks and college educated whites), but absolutely every sort was represented there. There were lots of people selling Obama t-shirts, Obama hats, Obama bottled water, hand warmers (non-presidentially specific), buttons, lapel pins, and other knick-knacks. There were a lot of “special interest groups” too: PETA was there, a lot of Jesus freaks were there, and some people were “community organizing.”
The streets were impressive, because they were completely filled with moving people, but the Mall absolutely beggared description. I’ve seen concerts in Central Park and Easter masses in St. Peter’s Square, but this dwarfed everything else. I’d thought the Mall (into which you could put what? a hundred Versailles together with ten Vatican Cities?) was a failed space because it was simply too large for either comprehension or comfort (God, does it take a long time to walk from one monument to another!), but the terrible and amazing thing about our modern society is that the Mall was too small f
or an event like this. It was full everywhere except right around the Washington Monument (which filled in later; I arrived around 10:30). So I took up my place at the Washington Monument and watched a little smudge in the distance get administered the oath of office.
I never went through a security check, and in general I did not find the security apparatus threatening or intrusive. I imagine it was stricter closer to the podium. I’m not even certain a bullet could have made it from where I was to the Capitol. And any would-be troublemaker would have had to deal with a very pro-Obama crowd. I suppose the place where the security was intense was the “parade.” I’m not even certain how one would have gotten close to it – all the streets around Pennsylvania Avenue were closed. It seems that that event is now a farce – it’s simply considered too dangerous for a president to process past cheering crowds.
I’ve got plenty more thoughts, but I’ll save them for another post.
That &*%$# smudge over there is the President of the U.S.!
2 Comments
The New Yorker blog had an interesting line about Obama that I thought was very well put. It particularly dealt with the lack of great quotations from the speech. It also explains why I like Obama so much. “He has never been a real stem-winder or a coiner of unforgettable phrases; what he’s always been is a great explainer, who pays the rest of us the highest compliment—the appeal to reason.”
You’re right. Mr. Tween pointed out to me a Peggy Noonan piece on Obama’s oratory (http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=407) which noted this phenomenon:
“Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line—“And families in Michigan matter!” or “What I stand for is affordable quality health care!”—and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years.
Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.
If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.
They should try it.”
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